A review by jasonwalko
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

lighthearted medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.5

Representation is so important in literature. We have a growing number of books that center around issues facing BIPOC and LGBTQ. Ready Player One is important because it brings literary representation to the most repressed minority of all: gamers.

How on God’s green earth did this get published?

Maybe it’s because I wasn’t alive for the totally awesome radical 80s, but the amount of pop culture references shoved into the narrative is absurd. What’s world building? We can just take a bunch of stuff from IPs that already exist and shove them all together into one giant unholy conglomerate! We don’t even have to make anything up. Also this is 2044 and people are obsessed with pop culture from 80 years ago? Can you imagine today’s world but everyone’s going hog wild for Betty Boop and Steamboat Willy or whatever because some old rich guy liked it? Whatever.

The whole plot is so dumb once you realize that the entire reason for Wade Watt’s crusade is because he wants to stop the transfer of his favorite video game’s rights from one billionaire to another (although I guess some gamers might go to war over microtransactions). Big yawn. Who cares.

Wade Watts also sucks, literally any of the other characters are more interesting than him. This man would 100% buy gamer girl bath water if he could. He develops a really uncomfortable obsession with fellow gamer Art3mis, a character who’s function is to represent the author’s barely-disguised fetish. Wade goes as far as to pull personal data files on her from the Bad Guys Inc. servers and tells her that “she looks even more beautiful in person.” And it’s played off as cute flirting. Hurl.

I have no idea who this book is for. The main character is a high schooler and plays video games a lot, which is more relatable to a younger audience, but there is a lot of swearing and sexual references that would make it inappropriate for YA, not to mention the barrage of Gen X pop culture references that a teenager would never get. Bad book. Stupid book. Snow Crash for Disney adults. Neuromancer for Redditors. All the conventions of cyberpunk with nothing important to say. But I will say this: it’s better than the movie. I’d rather eat a stale donut than a dog turd I guess.

While you’re here, I’d like to subject you to Ernest Cline’s “poem” The Nerd Porn Auteur, which should be considered a crime against humanity: https://youtu.be/LwNOzWXb7RE?si=oLgrcveq0uqC5kXP